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One Sprint is all it takes. Once Crippling Poison is on us we're not getting away from that Rogue until the fight is over, one way or another.
rogues positively HATE poison cleansing totem. dropping that with an EB totem (or smacking the rogue with frost shock) then using cure poison on yourself (if needed) is a great way to get distance on a rogue and maybe force a deadly throw.
of course, the rogues teammate(s) might just kill the totems for him (and they should) but then again, your teammates could CC the rogue.
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You know some pretty bad Warriors then. No Arms Warrior should lose one-on-one to any breed of Shaman.
i beg to differ. no resto or elemental shaman should lose to a warrior. restos wittle people down with flame shock and searing totem while keeping HP high, whereas elementals just plain nuke the crap out of people. applied to warriors, a resto heals early and heals often with downranked heals to conserve mana.
an elemental just nukes. doesnt matter if he gets interrupted, because even if the warrior chains interrupts for as long as he can the shammy will not have died before the warrior is out of options. in fact, the best way to beat elementals is not to use a 2h, but to bring out the sword and board, since it restricts them by forcing them to watch for spell reflect. using zerker stance vs an elemental shammy is a great way to help him gain some new crit records thanks to the zerker stance damage penalty.
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Mortal Strike completely neuters every form of Resto Shaman counter-measure because all they have is healing. Earth Shield, Nature's Guardian, Lesser Healing Wave, Nature's Swiftness + Healing Wave... all the Shaman can do is sit there and heal himself between interruptions and hits from the Warrior. The Shaman still isn't winning, he's just... not dying, at least until he runs out of mana. What's the Warrior dying from? Flame Shocks and Searing Totems over a half-an-hour period?
ya. thats kinda what heal-specced classes do. win by attrition. been that way since....retail? ya. retail.
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By the way, Enhancement and Elemental Shaman don't have Nature's Guardian or Earth Shield. You should see how quickly they go down to an MS Warrior...
again, elementals just nuke. if the warrior is 2hing it, hes in zerker stance for the pummel interrupt, meaning any and all damage done by the elemental is being increased by 10%. to have a chance at winning, the warrior has to go 1h+shield for spell reflect, because an elemental who wants to kill something quickly can do so very easily. thus the warrior cant risk the extra damage intake from zerker stance, and needs the defensive power offered by spell reflect, if only to make the shaman more cautious when casting.
in short, if an elemental shaman is losing to any kind of warrior, that shaman is either outgeared, afk or incompetent. elemental shaman are essentially nukers on par with mages in terms of burst damage, but with more armor and the ability to heal.
enhancement? theyll lose more often than not, and rightly so; theres no way in hell a melee-specced hybrid should beat one of the two pure melee classes unless the hybrid outgears the pure or the pure is afk and/or incompetent.
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The point is that in the rock/paper/scissors match-ups of PvP, Shaman are mushrooms. Warriors and other classes have the tools they need to be at an advantage against certain opponents; they have weaknesses that put them at a disadvantage against others, which is why class matrixes spring up and are so important in 2v2 and 3v3 arena matches.
shaman are more like druids in the sense that the position they take in the r/p/s perspective depends on their spec. an elemental takes on the mage-like qualities with incredible nuking power while maintaining strong natural defenses (talented resistance to certain kinds of spell damage, mail+shield for physical mitigation). their sole school of magic puts them at something of a weakness against the pure casting classes (mage and lock), but the tradeoff is higher efficiency vs high armor targets (elem shaman are premier plate- and bear-killers).
an enhancement takes on the rogue or warrior-like qualities depending on weapon choice (2h or DW). one goes for more consistent, higher overall damage (DW) while the other opts for burst. even now at 70 there are times and places where a pvp geared shaman can destroy pvp geared clothies in a matter of seconds (like, <10 seconds, not 120), assuming things go their way. their ability to toss out extreme damage randomly is both a blessing and curse, as they have no control over it, but their opponents have no idea when the damage is going to come either. they gain this melee burst power at the cost of their casting and healing potential, and the sacrifice of a shield and reliance on their weapon puts them at a disadvantage when faced against pure melee (with the somewhat exception of feral druids, which is kind of a wash).
finally, a resto opts for the support and outlasting side of shaman. they have the second highest armor class of a healer (and unlike druids, they dont need to shed their armor in order to heal), and win fights one of two ways; by outlasting their opponent in personal combat, or by supporting their allies to victory. the only sure fire way to kill a resto shammy quickly is to eliminate their mana, or overwhelm them with numbers. but overwhelming pretty much anyone with numbers will bring a kill, so thats not so much an effective anti-class strat as it is an overarching tactic.
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1v1, DPS Shaman don't stack up well against anyone. Even with support, they lack the certain degree of self-sufficiency and utility (because they have none beyond straight healing or DPS, which is about the least important thing in small-scale PvP) that makes it worthwhile to build them into and 2v2 or a 3v3. It's not until 5v5's and large skirmishes in BG's that Elemental and Enhancement Shaman have any chance to actually make a worthwhile contribution.
shamans have great utility, some of the best in game. totems are, as noted, extremely powerful. the fact that they can render bonuses while being out of direct LoS is a huge advantage in many situations, as clever totem placement can force a target to disengage for several seconds while seeking out and destroying the totems. i dont know how many times ive lost melee range on someone thanks to a well placed EB totem, or the amount of dps ive lost because i had to run behind a pillar to take out a tremor or grounding totem.
and for the record, ive seen dps-focused 3's teams with elemental shaman in them that get pretty high (1900+) as well as resto shaman in 2's breaking the 1900 barrier.
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And all three specs of Shaman are so easy to shut down and die so fast to focused fire that it's not even funny. One silence/interrupt/whatever shuts down both our primary DPS and primary healing school simultaneously, because they're one and the same. We're got all our eggs in one basket, and you know what your stock broker always told you about that...
pretty much any class suffers from that under focus fire. with the exception of mages (ice block) and paladins (bubble) any class thats under heavy fire goes down fast, and no class has the kind of controlled burst damage an elem shammy has (making them key tools in any burst-down situation).
as far as lockdown goes, youre in the same boat as paladins are, altho shaman can at least use frost shock to snare should the need present itself.
now that ive said all that, i feel the need to tell everyone that i dont think shaman are perfect. shaman and paladins could use a few tweaks to address their issues, specifically involving lockdowns and how they can really cripple each class. but the rest of the complaints mentioned by many shaman are, in my opinion, mostly bull. shaman happens to be a class that relies on group support in order to realize their full potential, and given that this is a game whos pvp is ostensibly balanced around group engagements, i dont see a problem with that. in fact, id wager that making more classes like that would be a good thing for pvp. whether or not that will happen i cant say.
essentially, shaman dont have it that bad. there are problems, but every class has problems. its not the "doom and gloom" type of thing many people seem to think it is.